Kevin A. Hassett

State Farm James Q. Wilson Chair in American Politics and Culture and Director of Economic Policy Studies

US Economy

Tax policy

Stock market

Tax and budget issues

Fiscal policy

Kevin A. Hassett is the State Farm James Q. Wilson Chair in American Politics and Culture at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is also a resident scholar and AEI’s director of economic policy studies.

Before joining AEI, Hassett was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and an associate professor of economics and finance at Columbia (University) Business School. He served as a policy consultant to the US Department of the Treasury during the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations.

Hassett has also been an economic adviser to presidential candidates since 2000, when he became the chief economic adviser to Senator John McCain during that year’s presidential primaries. He served as an economic adviser to the George W. Bush 2004 presidential campaign, a senior economic adviser to the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, and an economic adviser to the Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign.

Hassett frequently appears on Bloomberg radio and TV, CNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and “PBS NewsHour,” among others. He is also often quoted by, and his opinion pieces have been published in, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Hassett has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in economics from Swarthmore College.

Experience

Senior Economist, 1995-97; Economist, 1992-95, Division of Research and Statistics, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

In his testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, Senior Fellow and Director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Kevin Hassett examines the potential benefits of dynamic scoring.

Kevin Hassett constructs a simple regression model that estimates the effect of the incumbent governor on state employment growth. The results cast an interesting perspective on the job-creation track records of the current and former governors who are now competing for the GOP nomination.

Even in a leftist nirvana in which all corporate profits are redistributed to labor, the average per hour wage increase would, roughly, only be on par with the current level of the federal minimum wage.

Although the Wells report finds that the Patriots footballs declined in pressure significantly more than the Colts balls in the first half of the game, replication by AEI economists of the report’s analysis finds that the report relies on an unorthodox statistical procedure at odds with the methodology the report describes. It also fails to investigate all relevant scenarios.